Few things in the world of technology have earned so much simultaneous love and hate as the social media colossus that is Facebook. It is an essential 21st century tool that allows friends and families to stay connected, and yet at the same time can be one of the most damaging factors to productivity for a typical office workday, as hundreds of millions of people sneak a few minutes here and there from work to check their computer or their phone to see what’s going on with their Facebook feed, or interact with others there.
In the same way that cigarettes were once a fact of life for many Americans, and you just couldn’t get away from the smell of tobacco, Facebook is now the ubiquitous presence that can follow people even into the bedroom or bathroom.
And that makes it one of the most powerful tools in any digital marketing arsenal. This is especially true for people tapping into the potential of behavior based email marketing.
The Power Of Peer Pressure
No matter how much we put an emphasis on thinking for yourself and following your own path, peer pressure is a fact of life for any social animal, and humans are one of the most sociable species on the entire planet. We like our groups, and they have an enormous influence on the things we think about, talk about, participate in and purchase. If a group of friends play together on a particular videogame console, for example, chances are a latecomer within the same circle of friends will buy the same console in order to play with the others. If everyone is watching a particular television series and talking about it, others in the group will give it a try to see what all the fuss is about, or not feel left out in conversation when the topic turns to that series.
This is a well understood, well documented phenomenon among groups that was established long before the rise of computers, online technology and social networking. But it is in social networking that we see just how powerful this type of thinking can be, because it erases barriers of time and distance. Now, even if someone wasn’t present when a friend saw a new movie, Facebook allows the moment to be preserved and shared with that circle of friends, to be consumed at a later period of time. Social (and marketing) moments are no longer “lost” just because a person wasn’t present at the time. The momentum of an idea (or promotional campaign) can be maintained thanks to the close-knit, asynchronous nature of social media.
And, thanks to the power of Internet, that ability to communicate is not localized to a small group of friends. An idea, product, or service has global reach. All it takes is one person to exploit the power of word-of-mouth promotion, and any product or service can go global.
Facebook Does The Heavy Lifting
Facebook does one thing extremely well, and that is collect data about the people that use it. The things that they click the “like” tab on, the hobbies and special interest groups that they participate in, the posts they make in which they include links to products and services they endorse… all this incredibly valuable consumer behavior data is collated by Facebook. And that information is made available to businesses.
This means that people who use Facebook as a marketing and promotional tool don’t have to do the research to find out which of the one billion plus people that use Facebook are interested in specific products, services, or concepts. Facebook has already done it. And they are willing to share it.
This is why anyone with an interest in marketing to the general consumer cannot ignore Facebook. The bulk of the market is there, willingly providing their own consumer behavior data. For people that use behavior based email marketing, the benefits of this are obvious.
The Right Tools & Time
A combination of behavior based email marketing with dynamic ads can engage consumers in a way traditional marketing never could have. Thanks to the data collection power of Facebook, this ensures your marketing efforts are actually going to the people that have an interest in what you have to offer. Facebook tells you which people have an interest in your product or service. They can even place ads within Facebook at the people specifically targeted.
When you combine this with a personalized email marketing campaign, it ensures maximum impact towards a receptive audience. These are people that have not just an interest in what you have to offer, they may be actively looking for it. Only digital marketing offers this kind of precise information and allows businesses to make use of that information.
And only digital techniques like behavior based email marketing actually allow companies to target these specific segments of the market for the kind of efficiency and aggressiveness in advertising and promotion that simply hasn’t been seen before.
When this is combined with metrics like being able to measure which banners, emails and other digital promotional tools are actually prompting users to click on and engage, it even gives businesses an ability that no other companies enjoyed before. Businesses can actually precisely measure how successful their marketing is, and where the most response is coming from. This makes it further possible to tweak, adjust and realign marketing efforts to make them more effective than ever before.
As the old saying goes, “knowledge is power.” Facebook gives businesses unprecedented access to knowledge of consumer behavior. But from there, it is up to the companies themselves to decide what to do with that knowledge. Some of it useful for research, but much of it is very useful for application. A careful combination of using the data, finding the right audience and then targeting that audience with marketing that has been specifically tailored for them yields an enormous response. Facebook has created a rich marketing opportunity, but it still takes the strategic use of tools like behavior based email marketing to exploit that potential.
